Unmasking anonymous bloggers won't kill off the blogosphere

Much of the subversive power of the internet rests on its anonymity. This is what fuels it, for good or ill.

It greatly enhances the scope for ‘whistle blowers’ - those anxious to expose the failings in the company or public service they work for. They would be in fear of their jobs were they to do so with the required candour in public.

But there is also opportunity for those keen to malign others with whom they have a score to settle - they don't have to declare their name let alone declare their interest.

Now, though, there is proof that those who cheerfully imagine they can tap out their bile and post comments, immune from the libel law, are deluded.

In America some hostile comments from a woman named Rosemary Port about the model Liskula Cohen have prompted a $15 million lawsuit against Google.

The libel laws on both sides of the Atlantic allow you to be pretty rude about people. But there are limits. Port's comments on Cohen, especially the reference ‘psychotic, lying whore’ went beyond those limits.

On one level the American public is enjoying a good old fashioned cat fight. Yet there are also some serious principles at stake. ‘I feel my right to privacy has been violated,’ says Port. ‘I would think that a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users.’

Google's lawyers point out that its users agree to a privacy policy that allows the company to reveal personal information to comply with legal rulings. The lesson here is: always read the small print.

Port's lawyer counters: ‘Our founding fathers wrote the federalist papers under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously.’ Fine. Perhaps the Surpreme Court will agree. But the point is that the internet does not give you any special exemption - nor should it. Google is not above the law.

The law of libel applies to those who write and publish websites just as it does to those who print and broadcast media. Some might be less inclined to bother pursuing a teenage blogger through the courts, not least given concerns that they would face a costly battle and not be able recover their costs even if they won, although the internet provider hosting the teenager's blog might have rather more resources. But that it is practical rather than a legal consideration.

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Even if bloggers avoid libelling anyone they can still give themselves away. The Times unmasked the police officer's blog NightJack as the work of Richard Horton, a detective constable in Lancashire. Some of the cases he referred to were traced back to genuine prosecutions and although Horton went to court to protect his anonymity the judge turned him down. Horton has now abandoned his blog.

Paul Staines who runs the Guido Fawkes website which specialises in exposing political sleaze, has pressed on despite being named by The Guardian after a Labour Party staffer traced his fax number.

Staines wanted to retain anonymity to avoid embarrassing his wife – a respectable lawyer. He formally retains anonymity on his blog for stylistic reasons.

Apart from those who go to the trouble of setting up their own blog, there are many more who comment anonymously on other blogs.

I tend to take more notice of those who leave their names. Few newspapers would fill their letters page with anonymous letters, judging that they lack credibility.

In some ways vindictive bloggers would be safer using the longer established medium of a phone-in programme. There is no great challenge to getting on air and giving a false name. Some radio stations have a delay mechanism of a few seconds before the comments go on air to seek to avert such comments.

Furtive activity always carries a risk. Some get caught out after using their work email account to send messages to colleagues that the ‘boss stinks’ (or words to that effect).

Anonymous bloggers are facing a similar reality check. Will it kill off the blogosphere? Not at all. It can survive in a world where there is equality of the law between the printed page and the computer screen.